Thurs, Apr. 8 – Memorializing the Holocaust: Issues & Debates

“Controlling memory: How should we memorialize the Holocaust – and who decides?”

Join us on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021) for this insightful conversation with Lauren Strauss, Scholar in Residence and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Jewish Studies Program at American University. The philosopher Theodore Adorno famously stated that to write poetry after the Holocaust is barbaric. Elie Wiesel lambasted people who called their work Holocaust literature; he wrote that “the truth of Auschwitz lies hidden in its ashes,” and that “art” about the Shoah is illegitimate and immoral. And yet, most survivors (Wiesel included) and many others agree that society must remember the Holocaust. The question is, how should we remember, and who has the right to decide? What should memorials and monuments look like, what stories should be made into movies, what should museum exhibits reflect? This lecture will provoke new thoughts about memory, responsibility, forgiveness, and truth.

Sign up for this event with Jewish Studies Scholar Lauren Strauss